Hope You're Smiling
by Telaka M
Summary: Alternate ending to 'Line in the Sand'. Cam delivers a letter to Jack, and Jack a letter to Daniel.
1. A Letter To Jack

_I Hope You're Smiling_

Summary: Alternate ending to _Line in the Sand_. Cam delivers a letter...

Disclaimer: Their asses will never be mines... sadly.

* * *

A cold day lit by a wan light from a winter sun barely upon the horizon and frost on the grass and trees; it was early morning and his doorbell was ringing.

He rose off the couch feeling like his spine was stuck to the cushions as he tried to straighten his bones, his whole body, into some semblance of life. It had been another night spent awake, eyes blindly focused on a grey nothing in the middle distance of his living room, a couple of empty beer bottles and a whole stack of memories keeping him company through the relenting hours.

And now he had some real company, a-knockin' at his front door. He released the lock and chain with a tight jaw and square shoulders. He needed them to go away as soon as could be dealt with without the thrill of bloodshed. He wasn't in the mood for thrill.

"Sir." Said before the door was even half opened. And then a hand on the doorframe, a slight quiver of anticipation in the fingers, as if expecting a fight. Holding a letter that was white and clean in an unmarked envelope was Cameron Mitchell, come to hammer the nail home.

They saw each other's eyes briefly, long enough to know that neither hated the other; that instead there was a miserable acceptance in knowing life had dealt a bad hand of fate, something anyone in their same military position would understand bitterly.

Jack let him in by leaving the door open and falling back towards the living room. When he heard Cameron follow he waved freely towards the fridge. "There's beer; grab a couple before you sit down."

Cameron obliged and then sat silently across from Jack, taking a fast draft from the cold bottle before setting it down on the coffee table. Jack sipped hardly a mouthful and slowly, eyes on Cam. A wary gaze, expecting worse to be coming.

"When..." Cam started and stopped, ran a trembling hand through his hair. He was in civilian gear; this was not an official call but one of personal duty. In an odd and painful way Jack appreciated just that alone. Not for his own sake, but for hers.

"When Sam and I were on P9C-882 together, hiding in the phase, she... she told me the password to her personal files. As part of a request. She knew... Well, she wanted someone to be able to pass on some letter's she'd written. One to Cassie, one to her brother and his family. A letter to Jackson. And one to you."

Like a small white flag Cameron held up the envelope again. Jack looked at it, but he did not reach for it.

"Did you read it?" he asked without accusation.

Cameron managed a weak, surprised laugh. "What—no. No... I printed it and sealed it, that's all. I know I should have given it to you at the... Well, I hadn't gotten round to printing them off then. Landry's posted out the one to her brother now. And I thought you might want to give Cassie hers..."

Jack tilted his head, working a knot out of his neck as he frowned. "And Daniel's?"

Cam gritted his teeth. "It's in my desk, waiting."

Jack nodded, as if satisfied with that. He reached for the letter now and Cam relinquished it. After a pause of just sitting in mutual silence he stood up to leave. He had no intention of sitting in on the man's grief.

Before he headed for the door though he hesitated, tense with nerves, sick with guilt, weighed by a thousand things he wanted to profess, wanted to scream out loud.

"Thanks."

Cam looked over his shoulder. It was about the last thing he'd expected Jack say.

"You were there for her. You did everything you could. Did everything I would have done. To be there for one of your own when their time comes. To be able to hold their hand and tell them they did their fight proud. It's more than most soldiers ever get in their last moments. We all owe you for that. I owe you, for giving that to her."

Cam's brow trembled; he had hardly the resolve to process the gratitude. After days suffering under a guilt so black and heavy it had almost caused him to starve in a stupor at home, it seemed wrong somehow that the throbbing intensity of it should suddenly begin to ebb. But... if there was one thing Jack never did it was bullshit. His had just been the most honest opinion during all of this, and now to see the man's eyes wet and grey... It was morbid comfort, but it was comfort all the same.

Jack let him leave in peace. He had his own grief to handle now. Next time they met it would be easier, but just now it was almost too much, to have to bare back his own misery as well as comfort the others.

He took his beer and went to brace the morning chill outside. Without thinking he climbed onto his roof, sat next to his telescope and opened the letter.

.

_Jack,_

_If you're reading this then, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't make it through so that I could say what I have to say in person to you. But I don't want any feeling- sorry- for-me bull, not from you because whatever happened, it was for the right reasons and you know it. It was because we were fighting till the end, because I wanted to fight till my end, and I can only hope that some part of the war was won, if it's come to you reading this and I've had to leave the crusade behind._

_That sounds lame, doesn't it, was that lame? I mean who says crusade anymore... ... _

_I hope you're smiling. I hope you're remembering the first time we met; my priggish feminist defences, my determination bordering on an obsession to fit into the man's world that the SGC once was. I hope you know that you spoiled all my misconceptions, showed me that it was all six and half a dozen after what it really came down to; the skill and the spirit of the individual..._

_Because of that, there was a time when I felt there was no stopping us – SG-1. We were as such that we made each other invincible. We were a team, the best. But no one told me that time would be the one to move us on. Bring us into other people's lives and new responsibilities and a new order. I never thought that you wouldn't be there. But I'm happy for what you have now, I hope as happy as you are. There's no one I know who deserves peace more than you. I hope that you've allowed yourself that little luxury now. That you've stopped blaming the cruelty of life's unavoidable tragedies all on yourself. And if you're thinking that my death has anything to do with you... well stop it, or I'll haunt you, I'll make sure you never watch another episode of The Simpsons in peace again._

_Smiling yet?_

_You meant more to me than what we both knew was responsible feelings. Intrinsic to our worldly roles we kept it at bay and yet I think there was still a satisfaction in just having the privilege to be at your side as your first commanding officer for eight years. To have your respect, your trust and your loyalty all in turn. Facing into the midst of the galaxy's worst battles I felt there was nowhere greater to be than at the muzzle of the best team I've ever known, at your shoulder whilst we fired against the enemy together, with Daniel and Teal'c at our backs, with all of us combined to bring hell to the Goa'uld._

_I'm lucky that I can look back and talk about my life like this. I'm lucky to have had someone like you in it. Normality is nothing if it means we've lost the chance just to know the one we love. It could never have been normal for us. But I hope I made you smile as many times as I made you angry, or tired or worried, or as many times as Daniel defied you and Teal'c showed us all a different way of believing. I hope... I hope you're happy. I was. Right to the end._

_Sam._


	2. A Letter To Daniel

A.N: _So_, I finally got round to watching _The Shroud_ and it had been in the back of my mind, after mentioning it in the context of the first chapter, to write Sam's farewell letter to Daniel. Meaning, basically, that despite the intention of this originally to be a one off, here's another chapter, this time in dedication to Sam and Daniel's friendship.

(There's a chance I'll do one for Cam as well, but not a promise.)

Spoilers: Best to have seen _The Shroud_ as this is set three days after the end of that episode.

* * *

The missive weighed nothing in his hand, and yet it wavered between his fingers like a dull, officious remembrance to a recent known fact: Sam was dead.

He bore the brunt of the indignation in his chest, the worst part of it being that it was undeniably real. The script did not read this time that in the end SG-1 had swooped down at that very nick of time that was the second of saviours to rescue her. There had been no ethereal ally to extend a gamble for her life, or an invention of her own for her to save herself with. It was what it was. And he hadn't been there for her when it had happened.

Yet she hadn't been alone.

He thumbed the edge of the envelope. It bore his name with a short, loose scrawl in black ink from a fountain pen. Not Sam's writing. Hers was longer, straight and clear. The _D_ here was oblique, heavily favouring the right and consequentially squashing the _a_. He recognized it to be Mitchell's writing, matching up to some I. scattered here and there in his drawers that the Colonel was still to 'fess up. Yet it had been Jack who had handed him the letter in his honest, quiet way of dealing with the most terrible things, handing it to him without saying anything other than what it was he was giving him.

He put it back down on his desk, between notes and books and coffee mugs. It hurt a little harder in his chest as he did, and he wrestled with a guilt that he already knew was from a self-decree of cowardliness in not being able to read the thing.

They had been back from The Odyssey for three days now and Daniel felt pinned by what they were declaring 'sabbatical for SG-1' and what he was calling 'probation for Daniel'. Like Landry had his hand on the scruff of his neck and was holding him down until he was satisfied the doctor wouldn't say... spontaneous combust, or begin to covertly convert the SGC, solider by solider.

With a tight sigh he reached over his desk for some paperwork and promptly spilt an entire mug of coffee, over everything.

His swearing was affluent and loud; a few passing sergeants gave pause but quickly moved on when they reached Daniel's door. Daniel himself stood up and kicked out, booting his desk with sickened upset, twice for better measure. The furniture quivered and a small pile of files toppled into the stained puddle, but what the hell did that matter now, deed was done, Daniel thought sharply, still consumed by belligerent guilt more than any sense.

He turned away; he could not bare to see that pathetic little envelope swimming in his coffee. That scrap bit of paper that was suppose to resolve everything. Words, he guessed, that she had been too cowardly to tell him in person, and so had waited until her God-damn _death_ to _write_ to him!

He bunched his hands into fists around his mouth and bit hard into his pallid knuckles. It was one thing to be a prisoner within his own home, and another to be here without one of his best friends to support him because she was dead.

In the dull orange light of his office a rectangle of glass glinted. On a shelf was a framed photograph of the team as they were now. With Vala cheeky and proud in the middle, and with him cross-armed next to her laughing because damn he hadn't been able to hold it in with the patter that day. Mitchell at his elbow, shoulders relaxed as they could ever be, which was to say they were still straight and broad even as he'd been nudging Daniel, trying to make him blink and pull faces at the camera. Teal'c next to Vala because the comparison was too funny not to photograph, and Sam at his elbow, standing close to him in a way few people could, safely, by leaning on his stalwart arm with both hands and resting her cheek on his shoulder; and hers the easiest and softest smile. Teal'c the happiest of Jaffa to have her there, by his side.

In a graceless act Daniel snatched up the coffee mug and hurtled it at the shelf. His aim was deadly, and both frame and mug scattered to pieces across the floor.

How could everything keep depending on him to save its universal hide if it kept stealing from him everyone he had ever dared to love! And though he had never loved Sam in the way he had loved Sha're, he would have sacrificed anything he had the right to sacrifice if it had meant bringing her back. He would have died for her, there on that miserable, inconsequential planet, and he would have been honoured to. More honoured than he deserved.

The coffee began to drip onto the floor. It was an ugly sound, and in its reticent beat Daniel felt the heat of his anger begin to ebb. It resigned into a tired abhor for his own rage, so he set about the mundane by cleaning the mess with ascetic servitude, peeling off his military scrubs and mopping the coffee in the cold air of a once happy office.

He took up the letter again gingerly between his fingers. It was heavy with brown water and heavy with reminder. He had lost a friend, an old friend towards whom he had left too much unsaid.

They had captured a solid rapport between them, some would argue from the moment they had met on Abydos. Jack had always thought so, and from that day enjoyed a joke or two about it, casually at their expense. Laughing, somewhat cautiously, at the combined strength of their intellect being only stoppable by their revere, even modesty, towards each other. Never keen to step on each other's toes, but rather enjoying instead to invent jokes that Jack wouldn't understand were at his own expense in turn.

It was unbearable now, and it left him slow and numb at the void her absence had created. The pain of old habits bit deep, as he realised her own office would be empty if he went to pop along the corridor and ask if she wanted some coffee. She would not be at their table in the canteen at the start of the week to share breakfast over memos, and she would not be in the rec room on a quiet afternoon for him to divulge his nightmares. To ask if she would be around that night so he didn't have to sleep, so they could laugh at better things and spend all the spare time they had trying to solve all the mysteries of the universe and its people at once.

He feared it was a loss too much, and so he opened the sodden letter and placed it flat on the desk before it fell to pieces. He read it because it was the last thing he had left of her.

.

_Daniel,_

_Call it a running joke, but I feel I know, better than Cam and I'm sure even stronger than Vala, that you're still out there. Endeavouring to do what Jack taught you best – fighting, and that when you return (again) our galaxy will owe you more than it can already afford you in gratitude, even after taking so much away from you in unjust reason._

_Whatever happened to me, know I was trying with your valour to fight for us all as well. And if I fought with even half of the courage and selflessness I've seen you battle with, I will feel honoured to have learned as much from you at all, and I'll know I died by some small victory because of it. _

_Daniel, like a sister I loved you, I truly did. And yet I doubt I ever said as much. But I know we both understood how much this friendship meant at the hardest of times personally. I can only hope that you found the same happiness I did from our companionship, and the same contentment from the knowledge that someone can love you so much for just the simple reason of liking you without amorous scruples. I would say at times that it is a rarer thing than 'true' love itself. A rarer thing we had only because of the spirit of your genuineness, your humour and your selflessness. I only hope now, that when you come back, you do not let anymore of it die because of cruelties we cannot ever hope to understand._

_I'll do my best to always be looking out for you, wherever I've gone, and wherever that is I'll love you all the same._

_Sam_

_P.S. Tell Vala I hope she knows she will eventually become a very lucky woman._

With the bitterest strain of a smile Daniel slumped, laid his head into his arms and wept.


	3. What Cam Did For Her

_A.N_: I wish I had more time in my spare time, or this would have been stronger, emotionally, and better contrived of its events. As it is it's been sitting on my laptop like this for weeks now and I figured I wasn't going to get round to changing it anymore so I might as well give it out anyway as it is for people to enjoy. It's not bad by all accounts, it just could have been better.

..............

A braver man might have known how to deny a dying person's last request by drugging himself on the ether of disillusioned but adamant hope. Harnessing condemned wishes for worse selfish desires rather than better needs, in sad and refuting faith, thus springing forth into some last wild attempt to save a life already not spared. Good intentions lie in good hearts, but not always in the right thing to do.

He stayed to hold her hand instead because she had asked him to. A bloody whisper, a small and desperate request not because she was afraid of what she knew to be the dusk, but because she did not want to be alone when she walked into it. A very human thing, and it hit him so hard that he might have folded in half then if he had not that to do for her first.

So he took up her hand in his, both of them cold and still, and as she began to waver between different states of awareness he toggled his radio and issued empty protocol and then laid down all stubborn honour and regret and waited with her.

"Cam..."

"Hey, _ssh_. Sam, you don't have to do anything else, you did good already. You did good. We won..."

"Cam, no. No I know... It's— that I have a brother; did I ever tell you that?"

He had to come to his knees to hear that throaty, red stained voice, but her words were sure and composed.

"Yeah, Sam, yeah you did. Is there—"

"This past year, with you, with us leading SG-1 together. I felt like... for the first time in over fifteen years I felt like I really had a brother again. You, you were great, Cam. _We_ were great. It made it an honour to come back and work on SG-1 again for you, _with_ you... And, I love you. I always would have."

What could he say to that credit, but nothing as he squeezed her hand tighter, held on harder to her as the only physical thing she might feel, away from the pain – his unyielding assurance, his presence forever to her.

Moments passed like dust trapped in a heartless breath and now he felt the true torment of time, or at least what it takes away from us all as daringly as sand cutting through glass.

He leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers, and where her eyes were closed he gazed honestly at her face as it softened ever more into a lax and peaceful countenance. The pain must have gone, in giving of her some last dignity.

Then eventually a sigh, hot as it swept over his lips and down his neck and it was the last, quiet and content.

....

Hands and voices extend unto you and become amorphous gestures of comfort, reaching for a place in the mind that cannot be reached during the rawness of immediate aftermath. Where so much becomes blocked and worse, denied. Certain shapes will become permanent in the memory though; here Vala banking through the doorway at the speed of a snail and at one foul glance falling on her knees, knowing, howling. The big man, making it past her, slower still to his mind as he reaches over his shoulder, places two calm and professional fingers to her neck, and then again, and again pressing harder each time because even the impenetrable solider shocks for his fallen comrade.

Others, strangers, these are the ones he forgets, and the ones who so brazenly in their impartial knowledge of the situation and towards these people try to part his hand from hers. He screams (he will be reminded of it later), spits and demands respect, God damn it, his friend has just died so can't he hold on to her, just a minute longer?

So what's a minute at this point, when she's already gone and her hand is loose except for where he is still squeezing it, trying to tell her he is there for her. He begins to fold, knowing this. On his knees, he collapses his chest onto hers, his head curled just under her pallid chin, and weeps with his eyes closed.

Until more familiar hands are gripping his sides and lifting him unceremoniously, so he stands on bent knees, still crying, still shuddering. But time has passed and now men in familiar uniforms are carrying things on with professional curtsy, so they're carrying her body out on a stretcher and calling base who call through the Stargate that they're bringing his team home, one man down.

He has failed. But at least he was there for her at the very end.


End file.
